Our volunteers spend countless hours traveling to observe BLM roundups in all kinds of weather. From blistering heat to biting cold, our team is out to create both a visual record and data points on wild horse and burro roundups. The data collection does not stop there. Follow-through is done through facility visits and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. There is a direct correlation to the number of deaths (from trap and into holding) depending on how and when captures are done. As an example, a Heat Index Rise (not temperature) correlated with catastrophic injury and death; both humans and wild horses may be impaired leading to this correlation.

Every year members of our team speak at the Motorized Vehicle Use Hearing. This is a mandatory hearing set into law in the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) of 1976 when the use of motorized vehicles was approved (it had been forbidden in the 1971 Wild Free-Roaming Wild Horses and Burros Act). Currently the Hearing is the only designated forum for public input on capture methods as BLM does not answer comments on how roundups are to be done in “Gather Environmental Assessments.” The Comprehensive Animal Welfare Program (CAWP) has never allowed public comment (nor have they ever actually done a review and we will be writing more about that soon). Land Use Plans (LUP) do not allow input. The only formal comment period to present any information on capture methods is the Motorized Vehicle Hearing. This hearing is listed as the “analysis” gather plans tier to. 

BLM claims there are many avenues for comment. But the “1-800” number and the Advisory Board are not venues for addressing Standard Operating Procedures or policy change. These are not venues where analysis/response is done. These are not venues that have any formal jurisdictional power or decision-making authority.

BLM has never really responded to public comment and we have been looking at how to use that in legal challenges. This year, BLM posted a “blog post.” See more here and find links to BLM documents.

Addressing formalizing concise and enforceable welfare rules should be the easiest place to begin reform. Instead, BLM does everything they can to avoid the subject and, oddly, so do legislators that claim to “care.” Members of Congress keep claiming they have this bill or that bill and none of them every address welfare standards directly (for over 50 years).  Why is it so hard to talk about a real welfare policy? 

Below you will find a response from one of our seasoned welfare team members, Colette Kaluza

Considering BLM’s blog about myths and facts as a responsive document to public comments on the mandatory hearing for using motorized vehicles to manage wild horses, many Americans do not view it as BLM using its resources to serve them or for the common good, but to manipulate and control public opinion.

Nothing about this response speaks to addressing obvious issues, only pretending they do not exist and minimizing, deflecting and belittling both the issues and the people advocating for change.

Understandably, many of us are feeling betrayed and traumatized by how BLM operates.  BLM’s modus operandi is to play mind games.  And the variety of ways BLM does that are recognizable: denial, forgetting, trivializing, countering, diverting, withholding.  BLM does not operate in a professional mode of information supported by data that Americans expect.  We expect BLM to review valid concerns supported by documentation. Americans depend on and need to trust institutions.  We have expectations.  When BLM violates our expectations, it negatively affects our well-being.

I have spent hundreds of days observing and documenting roundups, touring off-range corral facilities, and making Freedom of Information Act citizen requests and doing analyses, and then producing reports with our WHE team.  For example, Blue Wing Complex roundup last summer in NV, WHE CAWP team independent assessment report on BLM’s welfare standards notes 18 areas of violations (20 pgs). Comparatively, BLM’s internal assessment report awarded an “excellent” final rating (2 pgs).  Never mind the dangerous heat index and smoke, not to mention public pleas to pause gather activities, that BLM ignored.  Today, (blog) BLM says it considers weather and temperature, instead of addressing the unmistakable risks of heat index and smoke. (See more on our report at Blue Wing vs the BLM internal “excellent” rating HERE)

Reviewing my interactions with BLM (NV) in the field, I feel they have used any and all ways, they think they can get away with, to control, manipulate, and to gaslight myself and others. My interactions with BLM in general in trying to get information, are games of hide and seek, or seek and find, or truth or consequences. My comments to BLM at hearings and meetings are not acknowledged. When we note a potential safety issue at trap and say something, we are likely to be rewarded with little to no access at the next trap. My role is purely a volunteer acting as a layer of public oversight. On all levels, my interactions with BLM makes me feel abused. BLM’s modus operandi is to play mind games.

Below: Do pilots fly to low and too fast? Yes, they do. Even to the extent that there was an accident near trap where the tail rotor hit the ground and the chopper came to a rough landing and the second helicopter took up the chase. This accident was never reviewed by BLM as part of their own formal After Action review and there was certainly never any response from the Motorized Vehicle Hearing.

Trauma is obvious to wild horses and burros from range and into holding facilities. But it also impacts advocates.

The impact trauma can have on us is influenced by our own histories of trauma, our ethics and values, and our sense of connectedness to the affected. As we witness an animal’s suffering, perhaps we put ourselves in their situation or can relate it to something we have seen before. Perhaps we feel safe in their company and want to ensure they are safe and protected too. Perhaps we feel most at peace in nature, and believe that peace should extend to them, especially in their natural habitats.  Source 

As an illustration, in 2022 I videotaped a colt being driven by a helicopter causing the colt’s leg to break at the Pancake Complex roundup in Nevada.

Below: Pancake colt, broken leg (warning, graphic)

This is a federal operation with taxpayer funding and demands professional conduct by the agency. I told BLM onsite I was videotaping the colt, and I asked BLM to document it, too.  BLM refused, while telling me to act like an adult (for asking).  This made a big impact on me.  BLM was not creating any visual record for their teams to review. I realized that if the public were not there, observing and documenting, we would not know about these incidents.  As clear as day, the colt was helicopter-driven on very slippery and muddy terrain too far and fast, and the roundup operation did not slow down. The colt snapped its leg in a catastrophic compound fracture. The operation did not cease, the drive continued. After the other wild horses reached the trap, horseback riders went out to rope the colt. This was not a quick process, but agonizing to watch as the colt struggled to flee for his life with a leg that simply flopped. The pain must have been blinding. It was obvious that this was not an injury where recovery was possible. But instead of ending the suffering of that youngster immediately (as standards suggest), the colt was loaded onto a stock trailer and driven down a bumpy gravel road, while trying to stand on three legs, to temporary holding to finally be “put down.” Yet, BLM claimed in an internal document then, that no welfare standards were violated. If no standards were violated, shouldn’t standards be changed?

Today, (in their “blog”) BLM says these types of incidents do not occur.  These incidents occur and more than they should. These incidents are largely preventable if BLM would only take creating concise and enforceable welfare rules seriously. If BLM would only respect decades of work done by advocates that document and analyze why these issues occur: size and shape of traps, terrain, times of year, heat index, etc., review their operating procedures, put them out for public comment and create a set of enforceable rules.

Instead, incidents like the colt that snapped a leg at Pancake inspired litigation and legislation. In the world created by BLM, it seems there is no other avenue to create change than to work outside BLM in the courts and with lawmakers. We engage every formal process with precious little respectful response. The trauma to both observer and wild horses and burros is real. Regardless of what the BLM “blog” says, these issues need to be addressed immediately.

WHE breakdown of the BLM “blog” response HERE

We had been fighting the roundup at Pancake due to the lack of actual management planning, BLM giving away large swaths of territory to mining and fencing off more for livestock. When the colt snapped a leg we found the support needed to jump out of land use court and go to federal civil court. There a landmark case was won showing that BLM has, in fact, illegally delayed creating a Herd Management Area Plans (HMAP), the baseline management document that has been missing for decades; BLM just jumps to the Gather plan. We also got the gather plan kicked back for failing to actually analyze things like the impact of removing large numbers of horses on fire fuels.

Dina Titus (D-NV) introduced the Wild Horse and Burro Protect Act in 2022, citing the Pancake colt. This bill calls for an increase in fertility control and an investigation by the Government Accounting Office (GAO). We get a lot of questions about this bill >> The bill does not address management planning and evaluation of the number allowed on the range ( AML ) or welfare issues directly. It does not address the threat in the Appropriations bill that would potentially kill horses and burros in holding. She reintroduced the same bill this year. The news keeps writing about it as if it changes “roundup rules.” It does not change the “rules of a roundup.” The bill pushes an increase in fertility control over 2 years time to phase out most helicopter roundups. (At the rate things have been going since 2018, BLM will have reached AML in the vast majority of HMAs in 2 years and placed long lasting GonaCon onboard already).  We applaud her for caring, but we fear this may be “too little, too late,” does not address immediate needs before BLM pushes populations down to numbers never validated (and lower than were on the range in 1971) without any real analysis or enforceable welfare policy.

Action item: Welfare policy

Summer roundups are set to begin again. 

Summer roundups carry additional danger to new foals, pregnant mares, while herds on heightened alert during breeding season. Summer also brings very real concerns over Heat Index and Air Quality (see more HERE).

Summer roundups begin again without a concise and enforceable welfare policy.

• BLM refuses to allow any comment period on CAWP to address deficits, vague parameters and lack of consequences for violations. (There never was a time for public input.)
• BLM refuses to allow comments on how roundups are done as part of actual roundup plans.
• BLM refuses to address these issues as part of the Mandatory Motorized Vehicle Use Hearing.

WHE is in the courts on this issue (as well as many other issues). However, you can help!

Congress could put an end to this ongoing battle against preventable injury and death through simply gaining an enforceable welfare policy: create language in the Appropriations bill directing BLM to formalize a Welfare Policy through open public process (called Rulemaking).

Take Action Today, Click HERE.

All of our work is only possible with your support. 

Your support keeps our teams in the field, our investigations running and our litigation alive. Together, we will take a strong stand to defend our precious wild ones.